W. H. Auden: Trending quotes (page 3)

“I am beginning to lose patience
With my personal relations.
They are not deep
And they are not cheap.”

W. H. Auden

Case Histories (1930)

Personality , Patience

“The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.”

W. H. Auden

Funeral Blues (1936)

Star , Sun

“One can only blaspheme if one believes.”

W. H. Auden book Forewords and Afterwords

"Concerning the Unpredictable", p. 472
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

“Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.”

W. H. Auden

A misquotation of a haiku by Auden found elsewhere on this page ("Thoughts of his own death" etc.)
Misattributed
Variant: Thoughts of his own death,
like the distant roll
of thunder at a picnic.

Death , Distant

“I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.”

W. H. Auden

As I Walked Out One Evening (1937)

Love , Mountain , Star , Singing

“To some degree every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.”

W. H. Auden book The Dyer's Hand

"American Poetry", p. 367
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

Feeling

“Genealogies are admirable things, provided they do not encourage the curious delusion that some families are older than others.”

W. H. Auden book Forewords and Afterwords

"As It Seemed to Us", p. 498
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

Family

“In general, when reading a scholarly critic, one profits more from his quotations than from his comments.”

W. H. Auden book The Dyer's Hand

"Reading", p. 9
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

Reading

“I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.”

W. H. Auden September 1, 1939

Source: September 1, 1939 (1939), Lines 1–11

Death , Fear , Hope , Anger

“I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.”

W. H. Auden

Source: Paris Review interview (1972), p. 266

Thinking

“In any modern city, a great deal of our energy has to be expended in not seeing, not hearing, not smelling. An inhabitant of New York who possessed the sensory acuteness of an African Bushman would very soon go mad.”

W. H. Auden book Forewords and Afterwords

"The Justice of Dame Kind", p. 464
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

Madness

“Put the car away; when life fails
What's the good of going to Wales?
Here am I, here are you:
But what does it mean? What are we going to do?”

W. H. Auden

It's no use raising a shout (1929), first published in book form in Poems (1930)

Life , Cars

“A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.”

W. H. Auden

Source: Paris Review interview (1972), p. 251

“Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.”

W. H. Auden book The Dyer's Hand

"Notes on the Comic", p. 372
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

Love

“At first critics classified authors as Ancients, that is to say, Greek and Latin authors, and Moderns, that is to say, every post-Classical Author. Then they classified them by eras, the Augustans, the Victorians, etc., and now they classify them by decades, the writers of the '30's, '40's, etc. Very soon, it seems, they will be labeling authors, like automobiles, by the year.”

W. H. Auden book The Dyer's Hand

"Reading", p. 12
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

“Let us then
Consider rather the incessant Now of
The traveler through time, his tired mind
Biased towards bigness since his body must
Exaggerate to exist, possessed by hope…”

W. H. Auden book The Age of Anxiety

Prologue
The Age of Anxiety (1948)

Hope , Travel , Time

“Now is the age of anxiety.”

W. H. Auden

Widely attributed online to Auden, this phrase does not occur anywhere in his writings. It is apparently a confused recollection of the title of his long poem The Age of Anxiety (1947). (The phrase "age of anxiety" occurs only in the title of the poem, not in the text, nor in anything else by Auden.)
Misattributed

Age

“The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.”

W. H. Auden book The Dyer's Hand

"Hic et Ille", p. 104
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

Love

“To have a sense of sin means to feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which, however "good" I may become, remains unchanged.”

W. H. Auden book The Dyer's Hand

"The Guilty Vicarage", p. 157
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

Feeling , Sense

“Whatever the field under discussion, those who engage in debate must not only believe in each other's good faith, but also in their capacity to arrive at the truth.”

W. H. Auden book Forewords and Afterwords

"The Protestant Mystics", p. 52
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

Truth , Faith